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| Posted on 10/30/07 at 06:29 AM | |
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Pre-Registration systems to increase efficiency, in my personal opinion will greatly depend on your shop work flow as to how well it will work. Personally, I could really care less for a pre-registration system and often find that in the "total-picture" for many shops it costs about as much as it claims to save....let me explain some. You need to purchase a fairly expensive setup, regardless of the manufacturer you get it from be prepared to spend a couple grand...easy! Then, you need to output your films and spend the time to punch register them and tape them to an expensive carrier sheet.....then insert your screen into a special holder inside your exposure unit (assuming it will fit into your current exposure unit)....this takes a decent amount of "pre-press" time, and those carrier sheets start to add up cost wise quickly. OK, so if you using a registration system from Newman, well now you need to get hundreds of dollars worth of special "pin locks" for all your roller frames...and you have to take every frame apart to put them on...lots of time and money again. The Tri-Lock system will only work on your current size of press (Mini) if you modify the alignment pallet to work with the smaller sized screens as it is intended to work with the 23x31 screen size. They may offer a new smaller size for the 20x24 frames, but its not on the website. So, now if your doing say for example your doing a simple 3 color job for 72 white shirts, I can have my first screen burned before you even get the art work punched and ready to burn. I would also mention that if your not going to be running the job again you may spend more time and effort in pre-press than its worth since the extra pre-press work and expenses will not be utilized a second or more times. Now, that being said...if your doing lots of multi-color jobs (5-6 colors + darks) high production orders where there is lots of repeat orders, it is a valuable system for most people. But in my honest opinion thats not what most shops are doing with their Horizon Mini. I would say you simply need to develop your registration skills, or consider using another way. How do you currently register your designs on the press? Also consider the FACT that high tension roller frames register faster, print better-and faster and generally speaking are a critical factor as to why many people, and shops can register a job faster. Many problems I see with "registration" are clearly linked to using low tension pre-stretched frames and excessive squeegee pressure. Simple fact is that there may be several reasons why your experiencing registration issues, most of which a pre-registration system will not address. [Edited on 10/30/07 by CALIBRATED] ____________________  www.calibratedsps.com - Screen Printing Equipment - Supplies - Online Store Providing 7-Days A Week Toll Free Customer Support For Every Product Sold Printers Forums Equipment Classifieds Tutorials Employment Listings 
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